COLOMBIA UNDER SIEGE

The vicious narco-terrorists of Colombia's FARC must be rattled by the
election of the new hard-line President Alvaro Uribe Velez: They rained
mortar shells on the capital, Bogota, during his inauguration.

The shells (possibly fired with technology provided by the IRA) missed the
presidential palace and the Congress building where the inauguration was in
progress. But they killed at least 14 people, all of them civilians - and
most of them poor slum dwellers.

They are only the latest casualties of the Marxist group's bloody,
four-decade war against the Colombian state. It's a war that has become far
more dangerous for the entire region ever since FARC went into the
cocaine-growing and kidnapping businesses, becoming rich and well-armed in
the process.

President Uribe, whose own father was killed by the guerrillas in 1983, has
pledged to reverse the failed policies of his predecessors and to crack
down on FARC.

He plans to expand the armed forces, to welcome U.S. assistance and to
liberate territories surrendered to narco-terrorist control.

If he fails to defeat FARC, the narcoterrorists will wreck what is left of
Colombia's civil society, destroy its U.S.-funded oil industry and spread
chaos to neighboring countries.

That would be a disaster for the entire hemisphere - so the United States
needs to do what it can to ensure that Uribe, and Colombia, are victorious.